SUNRISE-on-Sea artist Jeff Rankin has worked his fingers to the bone on a two-year commission in which he created a massive floor-to-ceiling woodcut headboard and 16 cupboard panels for a Durban mansion.
Rankin, who returned to his seaside Albatross Studio yesterday after mounting a three-week exhibition based on the extraordinary commission at the KwaZulu-Natal Society of Arts Gallery (KZNSA), said his fingers were “crippled” after the mammoth task.
“This is the first time I have done something on this scale,” said Rankin, a former Border Technikon Art School (now Walter Sisulu University) lecturer, who fashioned the massive 3m wide, 2.4m high and 500mm thick headboard from a Malaysian hardwood called jelutong.
The colossal commission for Durban poet Doug Knox (aka Wylde) and his wife Shalane for their new harbour-facing Upper Glenwood home was inspired by Knox’s poetry and consists of a forest landscape and unusual flora and fauna.
Rankin’s unique bedroom commission is a far cry from the years he spent as a political cartoonist for Durban’s Sunday Tribune in the struggle-torn 1980s in which he lampooned politicians like PW Botha and Andries Treurnicht, but he sees functional or décor art as a feasible new direction for his work.
“The gallery thing is hard for artists and sales are not easy, so although this was hard work, I am certainly looking forward to turning more woodcuts into functional stuff,” said Rankin, who declined to divulge what he earned for his titanic labour of love, saying only that the payment was “generous”.
Although the intricately fashioned headboard, which he describes as “a wraparound wall”, is still in his Wild Coast studio, Rankin made prints and fabric panels from the woodblocks used for the project and these, along with the cupboard panels, were shown at KZNSA in an exhibition called Learning to Dance.
Rankin has documented this monumental artistic endeavour in a series of photographs which can currently be seen – along with other examples of his work – at Floradale Fine Art Gallery.
The gallery’s administrator, Rose Warren, described the results of the two-year commission as “the most remarkable thing”. — barbarah@dispatch.co.za
EL artist creates woodcut of a lifetime
Rankin, who returned to his seaside Albatross Studio yesterday after mounting a three-week exhibition based on the extraordinary commission at the KwaZulu-Natal Society of Arts Gallery (KZNSA), said his fingers were “crippled” after the mammoth task.
“This is the first time I have done something on this scale,” said Rankin, a former Border Technikon Art School (now Walter Sisulu University) lecturer, who fashioned the massive 3m wide, 2.4m high and 500mm thick headboard from a Malaysian hardwood called jelutong.
The colossal commission for Durban poet Doug Knox (aka Wylde) and his wife Shalane for their new harbour-facing Upper Glenwood home was inspired by Knox’s poetry and consists of a forest landscape and unusual flora and fauna.
Rankin’s unique bedroom commission is a far cry from the years he spent as a political cartoonist for Durban’s Sunday Tribune in the struggle-torn 1980s in which he lampooned politicians like PW Botha and Andries Treurnicht, but he sees functional or décor art as a feasible new direction for his work.
“The gallery thing is hard for artists and sales are not easy, so although this was hard work, I am certainly looking forward to turning more woodcuts into functional stuff,” said Rankin, who declined to divulge what he earned for his titanic labour of love, saying only that the payment was “generous”.
Although the intricately fashioned headboard, which he describes as “a wraparound wall”, is still in his Wild Coast studio, Rankin made prints and fabric panels from the woodblocks used for the project and these, along with the cupboard panels, were shown at KZNSA in an exhibition called Learning to Dance.
Rankin has documented this monumental artistic endeavour in a series of photographs which can currently be seen – along with other examples of his work – at Floradale Fine Art Gallery.
The gallery’s administrator, Rose Warren, described the results of the two-year commission as “the most remarkable thing”. — barbarah@dispatch.co.za
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